Although there was one fateful moment when I melted like butter, too. It was just a single kiss. But what a kiss.
“Well. I’ve got to run,” Teagan says, untying her apron. “You can start by introducing Gunnar to Lola.” That’s the name of our finicky old espresso machine.
“Now?” I ask stupidly.
“You know you need the help behind the counter, Posy. I don’t have any more hours to give you.” She drops her apron on a hook, giving Gunnar a flirty smile. Then she ducks into the back for her pocketbook.
None of this is okay with me. But I’m so desperate to hire help, that I already know I’ll give Gunnar a try. I can’t afford not to.
“Right.” I sigh. “Gunnar, let me introduce you to Lola.”
“Your espresso machine is a woman?”
“She’s too beautiful to be a man.” I place a hand on Lola’s red enamel curves. “And that’s handy, in this case. Because we both know how much attention you like to give females. Now let’s get started.”
3
Gunnar
“Cool, cool,” I say, waving a hand in the direction of the espresso machine. “Show me all your moves. You always liked things to be done in a very particular way.”
My voice is flip, but I can hardly believe that I’m sliding behind the counter with Posy Paxton. It’s like sliding back in time. Posy always was a perfectionist. She liked order and precision, which made it difficult to teach her to tend bar. She liked to count out the correct number of ice cubes for each glass. She used to measure every single ingredient with the care of a pharmacist, which slowed her down.
It was cute, but really fucking inefficient. “Show me exactly how you like the espresso to be made. Don’t leave out any details, because I know how your mind works.”
When I glance up, though, the look in her eye practically knocks me on my ass. It’s a look that asks a hundred questions. Like, what are you doing here? And, how much am I going to regret this?
I can’t tell her the first thing. It’s none of her business. And whether I quit this job, or she fires me, her regrets are sure to pile up fast. But that’s not a problem I can solve. My job is to find a killer and then get the hell out of her coffee shop.
But standing this close to her affects me more than I’d like to admit. Sometimes, after a long absence, people tell each other you haven’t changed a bit. But Posy has. Her features have softened. She looks more womanly than the angular, skinny girl she was at nineteen. But some things haven’t changed at all. Her posture is straight and perfect, as if she’s squaring for a fight. And her eyes are still so bright that I feel like she can see right through me.
I’d forgotten how it feels to have a moment of her complete attention. I used to crave it. I spent entire shifts behind the bar trying to get the prettiest girl on the Upper East Side to laugh at my jokes. Whenever she turned to me with a smile, it felt like I’d won a prize.
It wasn’t mutual, though. Not really. And I’d better not forget it.
It won’t be easy to stop staring at her, though. Not with all that ancient history churning around in my gut. And not with Posy looking scrumptious, even in a flour-covered apron. She’s wearing one of those sleeveless T-shirts that seem designed to focus a man’s attention on the expanse of skin on a woman’s smooth arms. And then there are those tight jeans she’s wearing …
“Okay,” she says, clearing her throat. “Let’s begin.” The frosty sound of her voice brings me back to reality. It doesn’t matter how appealing she is, or how much I used to enjoy sparring with her. I’m going to have to call her “boss” now. That’s going to chafe worse than a sweaty pair of briefs after a ten-mile run. This woman kissed me, and then she got me fired from a job I’d taught her.
I guess I’m not over that, either. Thanks, Max. Great assignment.
Arms folded, I gird my loins and wait for Posy to explain the espresso machine.
“This is a fully manual machine,” she says, laying a hand on its red enamel side. “Italian, of course."
"Of course," I repeat. The Paxton family only settles for the very best. They throw away the things that don’t meet their standards.
Like me, apparently.
"Have you used a fully manual machine before?" she asks.
“No,” I say quickly. “At Joe’s we used, uh, something more automatic.”
Posy rolls her eyes, which tells me that I’ve just admitted to the barista equivalent of being unable to drive a stick shift. But the joke is still on her. Because there is no Joe’s Cafe at all. In my line of work, you have to be an excellent liar or you die. I don't even feel guilty about it.
“So, talk to me like I've never touched an espresso machine before.” Because I haven’t. “I’ll learn best if I can hear you describe everything in the master's own words.”
Her spine straightens a little bit, and I give myself a silent high five. Praise will turn Posy into putty in my hands. The twenty-one-year-old version of me hadn’t learned this lesson yet. That kid had a lot going for him, sure, but I can't say I was ever any good at standing back and letting Posy be the expert, even if it was her family's restaurant.
She'd never even held down a job before that summer, which bugged me to no end. Whereas I'd been working my way up the ranks at Paxton’s since I turned sixteen. I started as a dishwasher and mop guy. I brought the garbage into the alley, no matter how smelly and gross. I scraped the food off the plates and made them sparkle again.
It literally took me years to work my way up to the best-paid job in the room: bartender. And then Posy walked in one day like the Park Avenue princess that she was, and was handed an equivalent job to mine. And sure—she was a fast learner. But she was also full of ideas and opinions, some of them brilliant, many of them naïve. It drove me bonkers.
To be fair, part of what drove me bonkers was her trim body and perky breasts. Not only did I have to work with the boss's opinionated daughter, I had to navigate her fresh, flowery scent and her delicious cleavage.
I spent that entire summer vacillating between fascination, annoyance, and lust, sometimes experiencing all three at the same time. It's not a comfortable way to live.
“Naturally, we grind as we go, for the freshest experience," Posy says now.
“Grind as we go.” I repeat. “Got it.” And then I give her a wink. An actual wink, like a sleazy asshole. The same thing happened when I was twenty-one, damn it. I turned into a slightly louder, more obnoxious version of myself whenever she walked into the room.
She flips the largest switch. As the machine roars to life, I start to count. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Then she flips it off again.
Three seconds. Fine. A monkey could learn this.
Next, Posy grabs the handle of one of those espresso thingies and holds the basket part under the chute. She uses her thumb to swish a lever back and forth three times, as a tidy pile of coffee grounds fills the little cup, making a rounded shape. Like a breast.
Three seconds on the grinder. Three swishes of the lever. Make a coffee titty. Got it.
She grabs a round little tool and uses it to press the grinds down flat. “Lola is a little fussy about the fill,” she tells me. “Too little and the water runs through too fast. Too much, and she squirts out the sides. The trick is to fill her up nice and tight, right up to the lip.”
I try to hold it back, but it’s no use. A laugh escapes from my chest.
“What?” she demands.
“Never mind,” I say quickly.
“Seriously?” Posy's eyes narrow. “You’re thirty-five years old, and you still hear sexual innuendo everywhere?”
“Thirty-six. And it’s just the way I’m made. Carry on.”
Teagan—the girl who’s supposed to be leaving—snickers.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Posy demands of her.
“Yeah. But it’s more fun watching him learn to make espresso drinks.” She gives me a wink. “Maybe we’ll work together next
week.”
“Hope so,” I say cheerfully. Because that will mean that Posy hasn’t fired me yet.
Although I think she’d like to. Her eyes turn to slits as Teagan and I engage in some low-key flirting before the woman finally heads out the door.
“Can you pay attention to what we’re doing, Loverboy?” Posy asks, and the question is full of vinegar.
“I was already paying attention,” I promise. “I haven’t missed a thing. Let’s see you put it into—” I gesture vaguely toward the machine. “—The thinger dinger.”
“The thinger dinger?” She gives me a sideways glance.
“At Joe’s Cafe we always joked around,” I say smoothly.
Posy sighs. Then she glides toward the espresso machine, lifting one smooth arm to fit the filter arm into one of the espresso machine’s ports.
The assignment is a cupcake, Duff had told me. I’m starting to see why. The Italian coffee machine is beautiful, and so is the woman using it. It’s her confidence that always used to turn me on. I like the way she manhandles the part into place.
Is barista porn a thing? I'll have to check it out tonight on pornhub. I could learn a few tricks and get off at the same time.
Two birds, one stone.
Posy flips the switch, and the machine hums as espresso begins to fill the cup. “Our standard pour for a latte or a cappuccino is two ounces. Every drink is a double.”
“Two ounces. Sure. That’s how we did things at Joe’s.”
A few seconds later she flips off the machine, plucks the cup off the ledge and hands it to me.
“Beautiful.” I peer into the cup, taking care to note the depth of the coffee in the cup.
“Aren't you going to taste it?” She asks when I hand it back.
God, no. “It smells great,” I say, and I guess that’s true. The scent of coffee is so much better than the taste. “I was waiting until after you fizzle the milk.”
“Fizzle. What do they teach baristas in California?” She grabs a little metal jug and shows it to me. "We use about a nine ounce pour for a latte." She grabs a gallon of milk out of a reach-in fridge below the bar. Then she tips it into a metal jug with the practiced ease of someone who does this a lot.
“Nine ounces,” I repeat. “Don’t you want to measure those out one at a time?”
“What? That would take forev—” she stops abruptly and levels me with a glare. “Very funny. But I’ve learned a few things in the last fifteen years, Gunnar.”
“Me too, gorgeous. Maybe I can show you sometime.” The ridiculous words just fall out of my mouth before I can stop them. “I meant behind the bar. Carry on. I’m ready for the swirly milk part.”
She gives me another dubious look and continues the job.
Then things start to happen faster than I can absorb. “Purge the steamer arm.” She turns a knob and the machine makes a loud squawk. “And go.” She twists something, and the arm begins to hiss and shriek. Posy holds the jug in a way that makes it hard for me to see. But mere seconds later she shuts it off, wipes it with a towel, somehow makes it hiss again, then whacks the jug on the counter twice.
And all the while she’s speaking a string of coffee lingo. She says something about foam and temperature and “polishing” the milk.
“You could do a heart or a fern, whatever design you have nailed,” she says inexplicably. She’s pouring the milk and twisting the cup and talking a blue streak. “And voila.”
I look down at the cup she’s handed me. “That’s a fucking rose,” I say, shocked.
“It’s my signature design.”
“A rose. In milk.” It’s got layers of white petals, stretching toward a coffee sky.
“The guy who taught me espresso drinks was a great artist. But like I said, it’s fine if you can only manage a heart, or a tulip. Everyone starts somewhere.”
“Cool,” I say.
I’m so fucked.
The bell on the door jingles, and three women walk in, approaching the counter. “Hi! Wow—are you the new guy?” one of them asks, smiling.
“I am,” I announce, hoping that I already have the job.
“Well, this is exciting,” one of the women says.
Posy grumbles something under her breath. It sounds like help me, Jesus.
“Could I please have a mint tea for here, and a slice of the Dutch apple?” She bats her eyelashes at me.
“You handle the drinks,” Posy grunts. “We’ll go over the cash register and pricing in a minute.”
“Of course. One mint tea, coming right up. Where’s, uh, the hot water?”
Posy blinks at me, and I know right away that I’ve asked a stupid question. Then she points to a random switch on the espresso machine.
It says “water” above it. Live and learn. “Right. I knew that.”
Posy shoots me a disbelieving look. Then she grabs a spatula and cuts a gorgeous apple pie with slightly more violence than is strictly necessary.
I find the mint tea bags on a shelf on the bar back and serve up the woman’s beverage with a smile and a wink. Her cheeks flush in appreciation. “What can I get you?” I ask her friends.
And that’s when the wheels come off. This woman wants a “skinny mocha.” I have no idea what that is. I look around helplessly for a second, hoping the information just falls into place.
With a low growl, Posy plunks a bottle down in front of me. Chocolate syrup. Oh, okay. Then Posy’s eyes flip toward the espresso grinder. So I realize the chocolate is going into her coffee.
So I put some chocolate into a cup, and then grind three seconds worth of coffee. But when I dispense it, my coffee titty is misshapen. So the tamper thinger can’t make a nice, flat surface, either. This means I’m struggling to put the shot into the espresso machine. I practically wrench my arm off getting it in there.
This is Max’s fault, I remind myself. It’s a mismatch of skills. I could put together an entire room full of weaponry without so much as a hiccup. But I don’t know shit about coffee. I’m going to write that up in my letter of resignation, probably.
To Max. Not Posy.
When I flip the switch on the espresso machine, the first thing I see are coffee grounds dribbling over the side. That can’t be good. But luckily, coffee follows. Maybe nobody will notice.
And now the chocolate has changed the volume measurement, so I can’t tell how much is two ounces. So I flip it off at will, and then swirl the contents of the cup and flex my pecs at the same time.
The woman across the counter lets out a little sigh of happiness. There’s more than one way to please a customer. I take the opportunity to flex my biceps when I take the milk out of the fridge. And then—while the milk frother thingie makes a horrible squealing noise—I address my customer. “That scarf really brings out your eyes.”
“This old thing?” she says with a toss of her hair.
When I shut off the frother, Posy is making a gagging sound. The milk in the jug is peppered by giant bubbles instead of smooth foam, unfortunately. But I pour it over the coffee in two blobs. I don’t even try to make a design. It looks like ... Huh. It looks like a butt. Go figure.
Even so, I pass it to the customer with a big smile. “Enjoy!”
“Thank you so much,” she says, pushing a bill into the tip jar.
“You have a nice day! Who’s next?”
Another woman steps forward. She’s really interesting looking, too, with dark hair and giant brown eyes that look familiar to me. She’s wearing an artistic kimono-style top and about a million bracelets on her smooth wrists. “Posy, hello! How are you?”
“Great, thanks,” Posy says in an uncharacteristic clipped voice. “What can Gunnar pour for you? The usual?”
“Not exactly,” she says with a broad smile. “I’d like a decaf latte, half two percent, half skim, sugar-free peppermint, iced, no foam. I’m off caffeine for a while. And a ginger cookie, please.”
Oh man. I’m trying to play back that order in my head when I see
the blood drain from Posy’s face.
Huh. She must know that I’m about to fuck this up. “Could you repeat that, please?”
“Of course!” Her smile grows even wider. “I’d like—”
“I got it,” Posy snarls. Then she puts her hands on my ribcage and actually steers me out of the way. “Ginger cookie,” she says between clenched teeth.
“Well, okay.” I fetch a plate with a single cookie on it, then use the extra time to compliment our customer on her blouse. “That bright color really suits you. I love it.”
Posy’s smile is menacing as she makes the drink and then cashes out the woman, who thanks her and floats over to claim a table. “What the hell was that?” she hisses when they’re out of earshot. “It wasn’t that complicated an order. But you didn’t even wipe off the basket rim. Or purge the steam arm. And what was that milk design supposed to be? It looked like an ass.”
“Some people really like asses,” I hiss. “Especially mine. I was giving that woman something to remember me by. But I can up my game, Posy. I’m just a little rusty.”
“Rusty,” she spits, her blue eyes flashing. “What you are is clueless. Why are you even here?”
Irritation rips through me, and I want to tell Posy Paxton where she can put her attitude. It’s just coffee, for fuck’s sake. It doesn’t matter.
But then I remember what does matter. I scan the cafe, where at least two people have laptops open. Someone who has evidence of murder has been using this space to boast about killing people.
And I know what I have to do.
“Posy,” I say in a low voice. I force myself to meet her gaze. Her cheeks are flushed with anger, and her eyes are bright. “I need this job. It’s, uh …” Yup, this is going to hurt me. “I need it bad, okay? Can you give me a chance?”
Her expression softens. “Well, um, I don’t know. You aren’t a very good barista. I have a friend who owns a bar. Maybe he—”
Loverboy Page 3
